Comrades! Upon our Party, as the organized vanguard of the proletariat, has fallen the task of uniting the struggle of the working class and directing its struggle for the victory of the workers' and peasants' Soviet power. Having victoriously conducted this struggle over the course of two years, we now well know by what means we have been able to overcome the incredible difficulties placed in our path by the devastation of the country from the four-year imperialist war and the resistance of all exploiters, both Russian and international.

Comrades! The main source of our strength: the consciousness and heroism of the workers, whom the toiling peasants could not help but sympathize with and support. The reason for our victories: the direct appeal of our Party and Soviet power to the toiling masses, pointing to each successive difficulty and each successive task; the ability to explain to the masses why they must exert all their strength now on one, now on another aspect of Soviet work at one moment or another; the ability to arouse the energy, heroism, and enthusiasm of the masses by concentrating our revolutionarily strained efforts on the most important immediate task.

Comrades! The time has come when such an important immediate task has become the struggle against the fuel crisis. We are finishing off Kolchak, we have defeated Yudenich, we have begun a successful offensive against Denikin. We have considerably improved grain procurement and collection. But the fuel crisis threatens to destroy all Soviet work: workers and employees are fleeing from cold and hunger, trains carrying grain are coming to a halt, there looms—precisely because of the lack of fuel—a genuine catastrophe.

The fuel question has become central to all other questions. The fuel crisis must be overcome at all costs; otherwise, neither the food problem, nor the military problem, nor the general economic problem can be solved.

And the fuel crisis can be overcome. For, having lost Donets coal and lacking the ability to rapidly increase coal extraction in the Urals and Siberia, we still have many forests; we can fell and transport a sufficient quantity of firewood.

The fuel crisis can be overcome. And now we must know how to concentrate our main forces on our chief (at the present moment) enemy: on fuel shortage; we must know how to arouse enthusiasm among the toiling masses, we must achieve a revolutionary mobilization of energy for the fastest extraction and delivery of the greatest quantity of all kinds of fuel—coal, shale, peat, and so forth—but above all wood, wood, and more wood.

The Central Committee of the RCP is confident that all Party organizations, all Party members, who have demonstrated over the course of two years the ability and skill to solve by revolutionary means tasks no less—indeed, more—difficult, will solve this task as well.

The Central Committee of the RCP proposes to all Party organizations, in particular, the following measures:

1. All Party organizations must henceforth make the fuel question and the struggle against the fuel crisis a permanent item on the agenda of Party meetings and, above all, meetings of Party committees. What more can we do, what must we do to struggle against the fuel crisis? How can we strengthen this work? How can we make it more productive?—let these questions now occupy all Party organizations.

2. The same must apply to all provincial executive committees, city executive committees, district executive committees, volost executive committees—in a word, to all guiding Soviet institutions. Party members must take the initiative in strengthening, unifying, and mobilizing the appropriate work on a nationwide scale.

3. Everywhere we must conduct the widest agitation, chiefly in the countryside, to clarify the fuel question for Soviet power. We must in particular struggle against the dominance of local and parochial, narrow-egoistic interests in fuel matters. We must explain that without selfless work for nationwide needs, the Republic of Soviets cannot be saved, the power of peasants and workers cannot be defended.

4. We must check with the utmost care the actual fulfillment of Party assignments and the demands, requirements, and tasks of Soviet power. All new Party members who joined during the recent Party week must be drawn into the work of checking the fulfillment of obligations by everyone.

5. Compulsory labor of the entire population or mobilization of specific age groups for work in extracting and transporting coal and shale, for felling and hauling wood to railway stations must be carried out with the greatest speed and in the most strictly binding manner. Establish labor quotas and achieve their fulfillment at all costs. Punish with merciless severity those who, despite repeated insistence, demands, and orders, prove to be shirking work. Every indulgence, every weakness will be a crime against the revolution.

We have raised discipline in the army. We must raise labor discipline.

6. Subbotniki must be conducted more frequently, more energetically, more systematically, more organizedly, and above all for fuel work. Party members must lead all others in labor discipline and energy. The decrees of the Council of People's Commissars, the Council of Defense, and other central, as well as local, Soviet institutions on the fuel question must be carried out not from fear, but from conscience.

7. Local fuel institutions must be strengthened with the best Party workers. The distribution of forces must be reviewed and correspondingly adjusted for these purposes.

8. To comrades sent from the center, every assistance must be rendered, ensuring the practical training of the largest possible number of young organizational forces in the organization, conduct, and implementation of fuel work. In the local press, more attention must be devoted to this work, carefully bringing to public notice examples of genuinely good work and waging a merciless struggle against backwardness, negligence, or incompetence in any district, department, or institution. Our press must become an instrument for bringing backward areas up to standard, for educating toward work, toward labor discipline, toward organization.

9. Provision of food and fodder for those engaged in fuel work must become the most important task of the food organs. Comprehensive assistance to them, strengthening of their work, control over its fulfillment.

10. In all fuel organs (as in all Soviet institutions), we must constantly strive to ensure that personal responsibility is maintained in practice for each precisely and strictly defined work or part of work. Collegial discussion must be reduced to the necessary minimum and must never hinder the speed and firmness of decision-making or extinguish the responsibility of each individual worker.

11. In the conduct of business on all fuel questions, particular accuracy and promptness are necessary. The slightest manifestation of red tape must be mercilessly punished. Reports to the center must be exemplary.

12. In general, the entire fuel work must be organized in military fashion: with the same energy, speed, and strictest discipline required in war. Without this, we cannot overcome fuel shortage. Without this, we cannot emerge from the crisis.

The Central Committee of the RCP is confident that all comrades will exert all their strength for the most energetic and precise fulfillment of these directives.

To struggle until victory over fuel hunger!

*Pravda* No. 254 and *Izvestia VTsIK* No. 254, November 13, 1919

Printed from the text of *Pravda*, collated with the manuscript